As for the Kendall Jones whose hunting photos went viral, she considers herself a conservationist and shot back at critics with this Facebook post.

Ok I’m gonna explain for the 53567544th time. The rhino was a green hunt, meaning it was darted and immobilized in order to draw blood for testing, DNA profiling, microchip ping the horn and treating a massive leg injury most likely caused by lions. People try to say that lions will not attack a hippo, rhino or elephant, quiet the contrary. Lions attack and kill the young of these species. The adults try to fight the lions off and are regularly successful, but do get injuries in the process. As for the lion that I shot with my bow, it was within a 45,000 acre fence with other lions and plains game. It’s in S Africa, so yes it was within a fence, but 45,000 acres is the equivalent to 70 square miles and considered fair chase. Lions that have come in and taken over a pride, not only kick the older lion out, but will also kill all of his cubs so that the lioness will come into heat again. Controlling the male lion population is important within large fenced areas like these in order to make sure the cubs have a high survival rate. Funds from a hunt like this goes partially to the government for permits but also to the farm owner as an incentive to keep and raise lions on their property. If there was no value, the farmers would kill all of the lions to have a higher survival and breeding rate in their plains game populations. Lions take a toll on plains game, thus farmers need money to purchase plains game and change out bloodlines within their lion prides to prevent interbreeding. Now to the leopard, this was a free ranging leopard in Zimbabwe on communal land. The money for the permit goes to the communal council and to their village people. Within this area of approximately 250,000 acres, 107 head of cattle was killed in a single year due to leopard kills. Leopard populations have to be controlled in certain areas. So yes, my efforts do go to conservation efforts and are all fair chase, not canned hunts. In fact these are very mentally and physically challenging hunts, on foot tracking and walking miles and miles a day.